


Stick people

by Kara_luna



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, BAMF Haruno Sakura, F/M, Gen, Haruno Sakura-centric, Self-Discovery, Strong Haruno Sakura
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 07:48:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19313788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kara_luna/pseuds/Kara_luna
Summary: Sticks are like people when they snap, they splinter and dig bark into the hand of whoever it was who harmed them. They are never the same after that, something Sakura has realized over the years. She isn't the doll-like, boy chasing girl that they pegged her as and that's fine. They can think what they like, but Sakura knows something they don't. The most dangerous people in the village to its citizens aren't the enemies that shinobi fight on the battlefield or even shinobi at all. It is the civilian community that is eating itself alive, laughing at its own screams.





	Stick people

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so the tag situation is a thing. Sorry bout that guys, I was trying to say that everyone except Sakura and Shikamaru are only briefly or barely mentioned, except one person who is HEAVILY mentioned but I won't spoil who. Seriously though, don't read this if your expecting Kakashi, Sasuke, or Naruto to show up, I am warning you now. For anyone remaining I hope you enjoy this darker look into Sakura's past and the reason for her quite obsessive want to be pretty and the perfect wife when she was a little girl. OH! And the ROMANCE! I almost forgot to mention, there isn't any real mention of who it is that she's with, but I did write this with one person clearly in mind for being her significant other. I suppose you can guess in the comments or something if you want ;)

“We’re not on a deadline,” the Nara sighed in his tired drawl. “Troublesome women,” He tsked. 

 

_ Melodramatic brat,  _ Sakura's mind supplied quite readily. If there was one person more irritating to be stuck on a mission with then Naruto- well there was no one more irritating- Shikamaru would be a shoe in. 

 

Five days.  **FIVE DAYS** stuck with a man child who definitely shouldn’t have made it to Jounin with his level of laziness.  _ Two more hours and I’ll be home in my apartment where “troublesome” people can’t further my descent into madness that my teammates started 3 years ago. _

 

With a roll of her eyes, Sakura crossed her arms over her torso and leaned against the nearest tree, watching as her mission partner dozed on his back.

 

_ Deadline’s usually aren’t part of the mission but I’m pretty sure there will be questions if a jounin and chunin two-man squad is half a day late on a god damn  _ **_diplomacy_ ** _ mission,  _ she noted to herself, sarcastically. 

 

“Come on, Shikamaru, the sooner we get home the sooner you can cloud watch,” she pushed off the trunk with her elbow before quickly checking her weapon pack. Everything should be there, but with missions, you honestly can never know-

 

“How does your boyfriend even put up with your you-ness?” He wondered out loud without even glancing in her direction, his attention reserved only for the drifting cotton balls above them. 

 

“Well,  **he** isn’t exactly perfect either, if you haven’t noticed.” He snorted at that. “He’s annoying, either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care when he gets on my nerves, and has a horrid habit of imitating traits of his summons.”

 

“Then why the hell do  **you** stay with  **him** if he’s so bad?” The question didn’t seem framed with an actual want to know the answer but it did make her pause for a moment and consider it. 

 

“He’s been alone for a long time, just on the cusp of being part of something but never quite there. He grew up without his family, without parents, in a village that treated him as an outcast for one reason or another. Under it all, he was a little boy who forgot what love feels like.”

 

The Nara let out a large breath of air at her words, he had gotten more of an answer than he had expected from someone who was so private about their significant other, or at least as private as she can be in a world with Inos and Narutos. It gave her a strange mixture of satisfaction and smugness to know that she had surprised the strategist prodigy of their generation.

 

Honestly, they needed their own love lives so that she could enjoy her own, without the dogs waking her up every fucking morning to notify her that the seals around their apartment had effectively kept  **someone** out of the building. 

Really there were only two people the seals were actually for, so it wasn’t hard to guess who the brainiac was that thought they were gonna spy on her and her boyfriend.  

 

“That was poetic.”

 

“Oh shut up, it was true, alright.” Sakura seriously considered sticking her tongue out at him before remembering herself and how childish that would be. Instead, she picked up her canteen and poured the entire thing over Shikamaru’s ponytailed head. Her teammate lurched up with a jolt, startled more than any jounin should be by a chunin. 

 

“What the HELL?!” He shook off the liquid from his hands as he struggled to shake some of the water off his clothes. Sakura smirked at his struggle.

 

“We need to be on our way to Konoha not lounging on the ground sharing stories about our crushes, let’s go lazy bones.” 

 

She turned in a swish off hair as her own ponytail settled back against her shoulders, she gently smoothed her fingers over her full fringe. It worked fairly well given that she no longer had long bangs that needed to be swept to either side of her face. Hinata was definitely onto something back in their genin days-

 

“You're so uptight, get it from your mom or somethin’?” Back straightening, she looked up to see the Nara once again staring at her with his lazy gaze of thinly veiled disinterest. 

 

She considered him and just how close their relationship seemed to be these days. They had known each other since the first of their academy days and had already seen pretty much the worst sides of each other, at one time or another. 

 

_ Maybe it will shut him up about me having a pole shoved up my ass, besides it’s not a secret. People just don’t ask about it. _

 

“Yes actually. I do get it from her.” Her deer loving teammate simply snorted.

 

“Ya, I thought so.” He swept his dark eyes back from the white whispy shapes in the sky to regard her and the shift in her tone.

 

“Seems like there’s a story there.”

 

“That’s because there is.” Sakura allowed her legs to give out under her as she flopped down on the grass, simply enjoying the beautiful spring day.

_ I doubt he’ll be moving in the next few hours, so why not. A heart to heart with an analytical genius, he wouldn’t tattle or worry or really care, so he’s the best option I suppose. Bottling up shit never works out anyway so might as well chuck the damn cat out of the bag, already. _

 

“I’m gonna tell you a story, Nara.” She lifted her gaze to the same clouds he seemed so transfixed upon.

 

“Is it a fairytale?” She smiled a bitter, bitter smile that he couldn’t see from his position in front of her.

 

“No, it’s not.”

 

“Why’s that?”

 

“Cause fairy tales have happy endings.”

 

_ Civilians are unlike shinobi in the most obvious, yet hidden reasons.  _

 

_ They don’t fight or kill or shed blood, at least not usually, but they are not innocent. Shinobi life depends on skill and ability, no one cares about someone's gender when there are enemies bearing down and chakra supplies are waning.  _

 

_ Yet civilians don’t face death on a daily basis, they depend on something much different to survive. Men depend on wealth and women depend on beauty.  _

 

_ A poor man was worthless, and an ugly woman was less than nothing. The world of civilians was just as merciless as that of shinobi, except the survival rate is much much lower.  _

 

_ A family in such a system was the Naboki Family. Traditional and rather wealthy from their profitable merchant dealings, the main head had two daughters. Mebuki and Titani. _

 

_ In their existence, there was only one thing that mattered, their appearance, their grace, their ability to be the ideal wife. And when your a civilian woman you learn very early on, that there are only two options when it comes to survival. You bend or you break.  _

 

_ Bend to become what you need to become, to fit your environment and keep your head above water, even if it means changing everything about you that makes you _ **_you_ ** _.  _

 

_ The Naboki family had two daughters, and only one would become the wife to the new clan head, only one wouldn’t drown.  _

 

_ Mebuki was never good at bending. But Titani was. Titani was  _ **_perfect._ ** _ Titani was born without flippers, as the other women were, but while they sank to the sand, she shoved her own sister under in order to reach the shore.  _

 

_ Titani was the favorite. Titani was loved. Titani  _ **_bent_ ** _ and Mebuki  _ **_broke._ **

 

_ Mebuki isn’t a Naboki any longer, she is a Haruno. She had a daughter, her and the husband she never chose and never could bring herself to love.  _ _ They had a daughter that did not look like a Haruno. Didn’t look like Kizashi. Didn’t look like Mebuki. A little girl with the flowery hair of a Naboki, the vibrant locks that matched only Titani. _

 

_ Mebuki was a cracked and ghostly thing, not quite full, not quite living, and not quite human, but her daughter was not like her. Not dead. Not drowning. Her daughter was  _ **_alive,_ ** _ graceful and sweet, beautiful to a fault and so very perfect.  _

 

_ She was the ideal wife of any merchant clan who would want her.  _

 

_ But she had wanted to be a shinobi, to be strong and fast and dangerous. Sakura needed a mother, that is what Mebuki needed to become to survive because Sakura refused to bend.  _

 

_ Because Sakura was not her mother and she  _ **_refused to give in._ ** _ Mebuki needed to bend, she  _ **_needed_ ** _ to just  _ **_BEND._ ** _ But she was also so stubborn, so selfish. Mebuki pushed back, and Sakura broke because Mebuki refused to love her.  _

 

“You were supposed to be the normal one.” 

 

His obsidian gaze fixed on her forest green orbs, searching her eyes for an explanation, for something that she didn’t quite understand herself. 

 

His interest was veiled horribly, obvious to anyone who was paying attention, after all, he was a prodigy, wasn’t he?

 

He was meant to have a hunger for picking people’s minds apart and discovering what made them tick. He was meant to be able to analyze anyone and anything to better suit his own needs. 

 

“You should have realized by now,” She pushed herself back to her feet and turned to observe the dark forest surrounding their small clearing.

 

“Only someone truly fucked up in the head could empathize with a demon, believe in a monster, and run with a rabid wolf.”


End file.
